A Visit From the Goon Squad - Jennifer Egan [62]
“I’ll always protect you, sweetheart,” Dolly whispered into Lulu’s ear. “Nothing bad will ever happen to us—you know that, right?”
Lulu slept on.
The next day they piled into two black armored cars that resembled jeeps, only heavier. Arc and some soldiers went in the first car, Dolly and Lulu and Kitty in the second. Sitting in the backseat, Dolly thought she could feel the weight of the car shoving them into the earth. She was exhausted, full of dread.
Kitty had undergone a staggering metamorphosis. She’d washed her hair, applied makeup, and slipped into a sleeveless sage-colored dress made of crushed velvet. It brought out flecks of green in her blue eyes and made them look turquoise. Kitty’s shoulders were athletically golden, her lips pinkly glossed, her nose lightly freckled. The effect was beyond anything Dolly could have hoped for. She found Kitty almost painful to look at, and tried to avoid it.
They breezed through the checkpoints and soon were on the open road, circling the pale city from above. Dolly noticed vendors by the road. Often they were children, who held up handfuls of fruit or cardboard signs as the jeeps approached. When the vehicles flew past, the children fell back against the embankment, perhaps from the speed. Dolly let out a cry the first time she saw this and leaned forward, wanting to say something to the driver. But what exactly? She hesitated, then sat back and tried not to look at the windows. Lulu watched the children, her math book open in her lap.
It was a relief when they left the city behind and began driving through empty land that looked like desert, antelopes and cows nibbling the stingy plant life. Without asking permission, Kitty began to smoke, exhaling through a slice of open window. Dolly fought the impulse to scold her for affronting Lulu’s lungs with secondhand smoke.
“So,” Kitty said, turning to Lulu. “What big plans are you hatching?”
Lulu seemed to turn the question over. “You mean…for my life?”
“Why not.”
“I haven’t decided yet,” Lulu said, thoughtful. “I’m only nine.”
“Well, that’s sensible.”
“Lulu is very sensible,” Dolly said.
“I mean what do you imagine,” Kitty said. She was restless, fidgeting her dry, manicured fingers as if she wanted another cigarette but was making herself wait. “Or do kids not do that anymore.”
Lulu, in her wisdom, seemed to divine that what Kitty really wanted was to talk. “What did you imagine,” she asked, “when you were nine?”
Kitty considered this, then laughed and lit up. “I wanted to be a jockey,” she said. “Or a movie star.”
“You got one of your wishes.”
“I did,” Kitty said, closing her eyes as she exhaled smoke through the window. “I did get my wish.”
Lulu turned to her gravely. “Was it not as fun as you thought?”
Kitty opened her eyes. “The acting?” she said. “Oh, I loved that, I still do—I miss it. But the people were monsters.”
“What kind?”
“Liars,” Kitty said. “They seemed nice at first, but that was all an act. The outright horrible ones, the ones who basically wanted to kill you—at least they were being honest.”
Lulu nodded, as if this were a problem she’d dealt with herself. “Did you try lying too?”
“I did. I tried it a lot. But I couldn’t forget I was lying, and when I told the truth I got punished. It’s like finding out there’s no Santa Claus—you wish you could go back and believe in all that again, but it’s too late.”
She turned suddenly to Lulu, stricken. “I mean—I hope I—”
Lulu laughed. “I never believed in Santa Claus,” she said.
They drove and drove. Lulu did math. Then social studies. She wrote an essay on owls. After what felt like hundreds of miles of desert, punctuated by bathroom stops at outposts patrolled by soldiers, they tilted up into the hills. The foliage grew dense, filtering out the sunlight.
Without warning, the cars swung off the road and stopped. Dozens of soldiers in camouflage